1. Related Field
This application relates to the field of distributed systems and more specifically to providing a method and apparatus for determining the source of a noted performance degradation in transmission within the distributed system.
2. Background of the Art
With the continuous expansion in speed and capability of distributed systems, such as public networks (POTS, Internet), user-specific dedicated Wide-Area Networks (WANs), Local Area Networks (LANs), home-based WiFi networks, and/or Application software distributed over these networks, the expectation of the availability and performance of these distributed systems is of considerable concern to organizations that provide services to a plurality of users. In many cases, minimum levels of system availability and performance are not only expected but are required. Such required performance may be imposed, for example, in the distribution of multi-media materials from a service provider to a customer who has paid to receive such multi-media material. In a typical video-on-demand operation, a user pays to view a particular service (i.e., a movie) and expects that the presentation of the service over a public network be essentially flawless. That is, there is sufficient capability in the network that the movie is presented without packet dropouts, which result in frame freezing, or loss of synchronization, which results in picture tiling. Thus, the service provider is required to establish a link, which may be over a plurality of physical routes or paths, with sufficient bandwidth to essentially guarantee flawless presentation of the selected materials.
However, as new information is added to, or old information is dropped from, the data traffic, the conditions or loads within a network may change considerably and affect the distribution of a multi-media presentation, with its imposed performance requirements.
Hence, there is a need in the industry for a method and system for determining one or more level of service (SLA) or Quality of Service (QoS) criteria and determining the network element or component that is the source of performance or service degradation that interferes with satisfying the required SLA or QoS.